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2016/02/29

The mail delivery of this one had a bit of a hick-up, but it finally arrived so I can share it with you here. I sent this to my friend Tera a.k.a. the Crafty Sugar Addict for a personal mail art swap. She posts amazing Mail Art tutorials on her blog as well as on the Viva Las Vegas Stamps DT blog. I was in love with the Northeren Lights Mail Art she made for MAM and it is more stunning in person.

This is what I received from her. Look at the color tones and the card is fantastic too :) I love it!

I am glad she was happy to receive the envie I made for her too (even though it took quite some time to arrive...) This is how it looked pre-addressing. How I made it: I used Pilot Iroshizuku Kon Peki fountain pen ink to color the envelope blue (I added a few drops with a pipette on the envie then sprayed with water and dried it with my heat tool). Then placed Succulents Stencil from Stencil Girl Products over the envie and dabbed some copper paint with a round brush on the sides, fading out to the middle. Placed an address sticker a little to the right off the middle and colored the edges of the lable and the envelope with a Red Promarker. The Dorothy and Rose stamp are from the Octopode Factory (founded by late lily Chilvers). I stamped them on separate papers, colored them with promarkers and cut them with a small scissors then adhered them to the envelope.

I enjoyed coloring these images. The dress has so much detail and with the Letraset Tria Promarker super Fine tip, you can color in details like this without much trouble. I prefer those markers most when it comes to detail work.

When I was done with the envie I sealed it with a bit of matte Modge Podge so the colors would hopefully not bleed through during transit.

I definitely love doing Mail Art swaps and if you would like to do a swap with me you can find me on Swap-Bot (my preferred swap place). Or you can contact me through my Facebook page or just leave a comment on this blog post.

Hope this inspires you to create some mail art :) Thanks for stopping by!

2016/02/26

A few years ago a group of instagram friends and I started a traveling art journal together (the cover of my 80s themed journal) and recently I had the inspiration to finish up my pages for my friend Ronay and sent it home to her. Her journal was unthemed and she asked to contribute whatever we inspired to do at that moment. I made the pages below.

Starting off with an inspirational quote. Dali face stamp is from Carmen's Veranda.

2016/02/24

This pen has been high on my wishlist even since I have been researching the Pelikan M620 City series collection and bought the Athens. Last year an opportunity arose to buy this gorgeous pen from another collector and I jumped on it! It did cost me a pretty penny, but oh, so worth it! I am so smitten with it! Look at that gorgeous two tone barrel!

I paired it with a gorgeous ink color, Caran d'Ache Colors of the Earth Sunset. Sadly this line has been discontinued so it's not widely available anymore. If you're lucky to find it at a brick and mortar store (like I did) grab your chance and get it when you can!

These are the Caran d'Ache Colors of the Earth ink bottles. From left to right: Carbon, Grad Canyon, Storm, Caribbean Sea, Saffron and Sunset. (not pictured in this line is blue sky, blue night and amazon) For a great comparison of the old Earth ink and new Chromatic ink of CdA with other inks, see this blogpost from Goulet Pens.

The pen has a nice wet writing Broad nib and the shading really comes out great with it. It's not too saturated and behaves rather well in my Loving Kindness written meditation journal which has pretty absorbent paper. It shows off lovely pink tones a nice sunset can have.

This is what the shading looks like on smoother paper. Oh and see that ink sloshing in that pen body! So pretty!!!

By the way, Gouletpens has a fun giveaway going on Instagram on Mondays. And when you post your fave ink pairing of the week, you are in the running to win their pen and ink match-up of the week. Check out their #mondaymatchupgiveaway for more info!

I'm also curious what your fave pen and ink match up of the week is. Let me know in the comments :)

2016/02/22

At Inkadinkadutchies we have a monthly ATC swap and it's great fun! Every month a new swap will be hosted where we will swap 1 ATC that has at least 1 Lost Coast designs or Carmen's Veranda stamped image on it. Check our events page on facebook to see which swaps are up. For February the theme was circles. This is what I made for that theme:

The alphabet stamps are from EK success Image tree, Life is beautiful stamp is from Art Specially (was a gift in the goodiebag at one of the event years), the swimsuit girl and circle frame stamps are from Lost Coast Designs. I also used color washes, coffee stain stencils and copper paint for the back ground, which you can only see in a certain angle.

The shimmer adds a nice dimension to the piece. Finally I matted it on black cardstock.

2016/02/19

This is what my coffee table set up looks like on a random sunday evening:

On the couch next to me a tray of inks waiting to be swabbed on Maruman Mnemosyne wordcards. The tray included lot of older Sailor inks which are discontinued now.

Swabbing away while binge watching "Being Human" episodes. Used a waterman 12 to write the make and color of the ink. Lots of pretty and saturated colors in this swab round! Such a shame those bright, happy Sailor Jentle colors are no longer regularly available!

The Q-tips after one swabbing session leaves a pretty "Q-typical abstract art" and it's such a fun sight to see!

I still have about 3 full trays to swab and 3 more seasons of Being Human to watch... and a few new inks are coming my way soon too... so much to look forward to!

2016/02/17

Last year I got to participate in the Pelikan Wanderlust/box and had a chance to sample the LE ink of that year, Pelikan Edelstein Amethyst. I paired it up with my Pelikan M620 Athens.

I love the "wanderlust" sign on the bottle! I think they have repurposed their bottles from their last project ;) So the idea was to write a letter on why you love/use fountain pens and stick it back in the box and send it on to a fellow enthusiast.

Hmmm... I have not purchased the M200 Amethyst yet... maybe I should get on that.

The ink is a nice lavender color and looks good on ivory paper. The shading looks better on white paper though.

An excerpt from my mindfulness meta-meditation journal (a.k.a the loving kindness meditation). You can also see the pretty translucency the pen has.

So the wanderboxes are still out there (I passed this one on to my friend Tania a while ago) and I am curious to see the end results like in the Wanderlust experiment Pelikan had put out there.

2016/02/12

There is something wonderful about discovering new music. Melodies and lyrics that are new and unfamiliar taking up space in your head and then be part of your heart. I virtually know all the songs of Walk the Moon by heart now and to get them out of my head (because having the same song stuck on repeat in your head for days on end can be somewhat annoying!) I have made a few pages in my art journal dedicated to one of my fave songs Anna Sun.

I wrote lyrics with my waterman 52 fountain pen inked with Montblanc Dandy Turquoise on Muji dot gritted paper (which holds up ink really nicely) as the background for these pages. I got a wet wipe and wiped the excess ink off the writing and made the pages a light blue color. Then I used Cornish Petal stencil from StencilsGirl with Amsterdam paint (mixed some red with yellow and copper to get a shiny orange) to create some sun rays. I let it dry really well and then glued the pages in my art journal. I wrote the lyrics down on the right with a fine steadtler fine liner and stamped a line from the song bigger and accentuated with a black marker. On the left I used one of Lost Coast Designs newest release stamps, Franco Face to capture the look of having a song stuck in your head.

I stamped it on vellum see though paper so that the design on the back can be seen through. I used Staz-on Jet black for this and the steadtler fineliner to hand letter the lyrics of the song in the open spaces.

The paper I used for the back ground was slightly smaller than the pages in the journal and I don't like the empty white lines under it. Easily fixed with back ground color matching masking tape. I also added a small gold line of masking tape and wrote more lyrics on them. To bring the piece together I stamped a moth stamp by paper artsy hot picks with Staz-On Teal blue (I really need a re-inker for this one!) randomly on the pages.

I obviously really needed to get this song unstuck out of my head!

And you know what, when I was done with these pages, it really worked! Keeping an art journal is definitely a meditative process :)

So I also used this stamp in my daily writing journal which has a space to create something on top of the left page. And just hand lettered in all the songs by Walk the Moon because I was very excited to go to their upcoming concert at the Melkweg in Amsterdam (they first would play in november last year, but that got cancelled due to the attacks in France and military state Brussels was in back then... scary times!) I'm glad they rescheduled and the gig will be on feb. 16th. My sweetie is taking me there and I can't wait to hear them play live! If you wanna see them play live as well, they have a few dates in Europe in February & March.

I'll leave you with another one of their catchy songs Shut Up and Dance!

2016/02/10

During my Chistmas break from work I was catching up on Goulet Q&A (where Brian Goulet from the Goulet Pencompany answers FP and stationery related questions on a weekly basis) and in episode 106 a reader asked him

Which is something I have wondered about myself seeing I have 2 of these resin falcons. Brian tests them out with water and it seemed to work! But he also said it needs to be tested with inks and see if it leaks in the long run /during storage. He then asks to anyone whom owns a resin falcon to help and test this out as well. So I thought, why the hell not and satisfy my own curiosity?!

As I said I have two Falcons: an older Namiki branded one with Medium Soft nib with gold finish and a newer Pilot branded one with Soft Extra Fine nib with rhodium finish. I converted these falcons by using silicone grease and a spare O-rings I have from my TWSBI's. I put the O ring flush against the section's metal ring above the thread ends and applied a liberal amount of silicone grease on the treads of the section. With a pipette I 'droppered' the ink from the vials in the pen bodies. Then screwed tight.

I used to have a monthly Goulet Inkdrop subscription for over 2 years and still have SO many ink samples to try out in pens. Wanted to test some blue hues and used the following samples in my Falcons: Diamine Presidential Blue (kinda fitting with the whole election race going on in the US at the moment) and De Atramentis Atlantic Blue which is darker than I expected it to be. Both are fun alternative choices if you want to have a different work-safe Royal Blue ink tone in your pen.

I used the Falcons in my daily mindfulness meditation journal and the ink flow in the writing kept up nicely. No blobs of ink gushing out of the pen as sometimes with eyedropper conversions can be the case (something to do with the heat of your hands that can build up an air bubble in the section and causes to blob ink ... or so someone told me, I flunked chemistry in high school...) I've had that in my Pilot preppy and 78G happen before, but nope not with these birds. I was very pleased with their performance.

They are quite pretty Birds too. But the real questions remains, do they leak? Well I am happy to report, no they do not! I've had them lying horizontally on my desk overnight on my notepad and no leakage. I've had them stored upright in my pen cube for a night too and no leakage.

Pretty sweet! Now I can keep using these babies to test more samples with :)

The X-Files are back, baby! Sorry, super random, but I am loving the season so far!

So I think it's definitely safe to convert your resin falcons to an eyedropper. What you do have to consider though that it is tough to gage the ink levels in the pen as it's a solid black body and no ink window. Not really a solution for that except to write with your pen until it runs dry. Or maybe carefully unscrew the section and place the body upright in an ink tray and peek in the barrel with a bright flash/phone light? I would only test this when you are at home though... ink spillage may occur.

Comparison shot of the SEF pilot branded falcon and the older SM namiki falcon nibs with different Rhodium and Gold finishes. To me this is serious nibbage though some may or may not agree. Also check out Gourmetpens review with more facts, flex comparison and sexy nib shots!

2016/02/08

February has been dubbed International Correspondence Writing Month aka InCoWriMo. The idea is that you write a letter each day of february and I will use this as a good excuse to get my reply pile under control! I hope that I can at least write a few letters a week. And of course I can't send a letter off in a boring plain envelope, so I dressed a few up which you can see below:

Those little envelope stamps at bottom right are from Elke at Craft and Things in Antwerp. The typewriter is from a HEMA stamp set. Wonderland postage art stamps are from 'Stamp Attack' and the Happy Mail font is Start me up Broadway from Technique Tuesday. The hand holding a piece of paper stamp is from Dixi Craft. The Fish poste was gifted to me so not sure which brand that is and other smaller stamps I used are from Artemio stamps.

Another envie I did in this theme. The letter stamps at the bottom is Fukuro alphabet set from Sakuralala.

Are you participating in Incowrimo this year? Hope this inspires you to dress up your envelopes for your correspondences :) Thanks for stopping by!

2016/02/05

So I started this overview in the 3rd weekend of January but I actually managed to complete it this past monday! It seems like I'm getting the hang of it, finally! I have been using different things for this month so it looks "bolder" than the previous months pages do. Also a lot has happened this month. I've taken a few "work in process" pictures as it's fun to see how the pages change as I add more stuff to it. FYI I did not use a primer like I did in the december month. Bleed though is still an issue, sadly...

A print of my hand carved David Bowie stamp (printed with versamark chalk ink olive tone) could not be missed in this month's overview for obvious reasons.

Lots of orange, red and blue tones. And I keep busting those adorable 365 planner stamps from sakuralala. I recently found THIS cute little matchbox box again with those adorable hand made stickers. It was sent to me in a swap with my friend Arkaya years ago and they are so perfect to use in the planner!

And this is what the finished month looks like. I have written 'January 2016' with a Pilot Parallel Fountain pen 6mm width. Other fountain pens I used on here; pilot kaküno with black ink (the fune print), Edison Nouvau premier LE Caribbean sea with Pilot Iroshizuku Ama Iro and Franklin Christoph Intrinsic 02 with Kingdom Note Saskia Charona.

A close up of the kitty sticker and I still really love that gorgeous Moon charm.

The last weekend of January turned out pretty Epic for the following reason: we adopted a cat from the local animal shelter! My heart is so full with love for our little pretty kitty... and she will start living with us 1/2 through February! I suspect the month of February will have a lot of cat mentions in them :) Also a reason to finally use my Instax mini 8 camera maybe?

2016/02/03

As you may or may not know (it's hard to miss really!) I really like blue inks, esp. turquoise and teal blue. In a recent visit to Akkerman in the Hague I found this gorgeous blue ink color which I did not have yet. I corrected that mistake immediately!

It's Private Reserve Naples Blue (yes, yes I know I made a spelling boo-boo on my sample card, But to my defence that's how you spell Naples in Dutch ;) and by luck they had a large bottle of it and it was on sale! Double score!! The samples above are done with a Q-tip and on Maruman Mnymosyne wordscards cardstock and the wash out next to it on 80gsm Office Supply grid paper. The maruman card shows the deep saturation and man it has some gorgeous sheen to it! It's best seen in wet writers and flex pens like below.

This was for a flexnib friday post on Instagram and it's written with my Waterman 52 with Ideal nib #2 which has a really nice flexibility to it. The glare on the writing is wet ink, and it dried up with an amazing sheen!

Check out that red sheen! Nice deep saturated blue color with amazing sheen and and even some shading... Private Reserve really made a gorgeous color here!

2016/02/01

Exactly three weeks ago the news hit that David Bowie passed away. It really seemed like the whole world was grieving this loss. I sure was and I have shared my process of this grief with you here. A weekend later I made a limited edition run prints of 12 that I put up for sale on my personal FB page to share with friends. They were gone within a day. For the envelopes I made customized stickers and I sent 12 pieces of mail art the following monday.

Due to requests from others whom missed out on the first run of the print, I might make more Limited Edition runs of this carving to sell in the near future. If you are interested in a print, please follow my facebook page for updates.